


Toy Soldiers

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Family Feels, Foster Parent, Gen, Headcanon, Kindergarten, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 05:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15767112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: She doesn’t want the people at the school thinking Roy is stupid. He’s got so much stacked up against him as it is. The last thing he needs is pity, but he’s hers, dammit, and she’s protective.(Sequel to Next of Kin, can be read alone)





	Toy Soldiers

The soldiers are trapped. The enemy is charging toward them, and they huddle behind a fragile barrier, occasionally popping up to shoot the guns that fire with loud bangs. “You’re dead!” the Colonel screams fiercely at the oncoming force, shooting his gun again. The enemy _roars_ , swiping out with teeth and claws, and the Colonel ducks behind cover. Other soldiers fire their guns. “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll save you.”

“What are you doing, Roy-boy?”

He looks up. The Colonel is safely wrapped in his hand, the other soldiers scattered and fallen under the table.

“There’s a monster.”

“A monster, huh?” Chris Mustang settles into the booth at the corner of the bar and waits for her nephew to crawl out from his hiding place. He stands in front of her, disheveled dark hair falling into his eyes and the familiar serious expression on his face. Even in play, he rarely smiles. She worries about that, sometimes.

He nods solemnly. “It’s okay, though. Soldiers aren’t scared of anything. The monster can’t beat them.” Chris glances at the toys scattered on the floor. She reaches out to pick one up. “He’s a Major,” Roy tells her. “That’s not as good a Colonel, but it’s still pretty good.”

“You know a lot about the military,” she points out.

“Yeah, because…” he stops. Shrugs.

Chris breathes out slowly, and makes sure that Roy is looking at her before she continues talking. “You’re allowed to talk about him, you know. I miss your father, too.”

It’s been a year since Xavier’s death, and Roy is still stubbornly silent whenever anything even brushes against the topic. Chris can’t even glean how much he remembers, but it’s certainly not “nothing.” He jumps at loud noises, mutters in his sleep, and latches on to the idea of the Amestrian Military as “the good guys” with frightening (to her) fervor. He can’t see a soldier in uniform without remembering his father. He _worships_ those men, and nothing she says can temper that fantasy. She knows too much about how men work in general, and military men in particular. She doesn’t want Roy getting the wrong idea, thinking that a blue suit by itself makes a hero. But Xavier was one of the good ones. Good enough, anyway. There are worse things for Roy to want to grow up to be.

“Come on,” she says, getting up from the table and walking across the bar. “Come help me with this.” She doesn’t wait for Roy to follow, but of course he does, with the awkward hurried half-run that only young children can manage. He climbs up onto a barstool and starts pouring peanuts into bowls and drying shotglasses as she passes them over to him.

She doesn’t give the kid chores the way his father must have, but it didn’t take her long to understand his need to feel useful. For obvious reasons, he hasn’t spent a lot of time with kids his own age since coming to live with her, but from the way he behaves, growing up with a military officer as single parent probably wasn’t all that different in that regard. If he’d had any friends on the base where Xavier lived, they fall under the heading of “things Roy won’t talk about.” She’d tried gently probing, for the first few months, but by now she figures he’ll let her know about his old life when he’s ready. If he ever is. And if he isn’t, they’ll make do with each other the way they have been for a year.

“How was school?” she asks, after a quiet few moments. Roy shrugs. School has been part of his life for only a few weeks, and if Chris worries about his behavior at home, she _definitely_ worries about him at school. Not that she wants her Roy-boy to turn into the holy terror she’s heard most kids are, but… Roy is quiet. She’s not concerned about his ability to respond to his teachers with a respectful “yes, ma’am” or “no, ma’am”  if they ask him a question; Xavier had that much drilled into the boy well before Chris ever met him. But she is concerned about his ability to hold his own against the Amestrian children who will see his Xingese features and lash out the way their culture has taught them that they should. She’s concerned because she’s never seen him write, not even his name, she’d had to label all of notebooks for him, and the girls do his homework for him when they think Chris isn’t paying attention, because if they don’t he’ll just stare at it for hours, thinking “I can’t” but unwilling to give up because he’s afraid of disappointing the adults in his life.

She doesn’t want the people at the school thinking Roy is stupid. He’s got so much stacked up against him as it is: his heritage, his living situation, the repressed memory of seeing his father shot and killed. The last thing he needs is pity, but he’s _hers_ , dammit, and she’s protective. He won’t complain, he never does, but his silence speaks volumes. He resents every hour he’s forced to spend at school, and if she let him not go, he’d flash her one of his rare, bright smiles and never look back.

She nods at the toy soldier sitting on the bar in front of Roy. “You know, if you want to make it as an officer, you have to go to the Academy.” Roy puts down the glass he’d been holding, and looks at her with interest. “It’s hard to get in,” she continues. “You have to study a lot.”

He opens his mouth slightly, silently voicing the obvious question. Chris leans on the counter and nods. “Yes, your father went to school there. He worked very hard. So where’s your homework, kid? Let’s see it.”

Roy doesn’t bother to hide the look of wounded betrayal that crosses his face. But Chris gives no quarter, and after a minute he slides down from the barstool to retrieve his bag. Chris takes the notebook from him and looks it over. “Okay, this doesn’t seem so hard,” she announces. “All you have to do is copy these sentences, look.” They’re simple, childlike phrases: “I can see the dog,” and the like. But Roy shows no sign of recognition when she points to the first word. Letter. The _letter_ I. She flips back to the alphabet printed at the front of the book. “Look, Roy.” She finds the R. “That’s yours, right? That’s _your_ letter. R. Okay? Write it for me.”

He’s obviously confused, but he does what she asks. It takes him a very long time, he keeps looking back at the model, and then returning to his own attempt. But the letter looks perfectly serviceable when he’s finished, and Chris grins at him. He smiles shyly back at her. “What letter is that?” she asks him.

“R?” he replies uncertainly.

“R. Now look.” She writes o and y next to his R, and draws a line under it. “Roy,” she reads. “That’s your name. Can you write it?”

He nods, holding the pencil in a tight-fisted grip and using his whole hand to copy the shapes, painfully slowly. But she can read it when he’s done, and so can he.

She flips back to the sentences his teacher had set for him, and then stands his little toy soldier next to his notebook. “It doesn’t matter to me if you do your homework, kiddo. I love you either way. But if you want to grow up to be Colonel Mustang, you have to figure this out, even if it’s hard. Nobody else can do it for you. Do you understand that?”

Roy nods. He glances at the toy soldier, takes a deep breath, and gets to work.


End file.
